(This is an excerpt from "Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers.")

This grip was named for and popularized by five-time U.S. Men’s Singles Champion Dan Seemiller, who was ranked in the top thirty in the world in the late 1970s. He was followed by Eric Boggan, who reached top twenty in the world. No other U.S.-trained player has come close to these rankings in the sponge era (since the 1950s). Four of the five U.S. team members at the 1983 World Championships used this grip - Dan Seemiller, his brother Rick Seemiller, Eric Boggan, and 1983 Pan Am Men’s Singles Gold Medalist Brian Masters. (All four are in the U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame.) The grip is sometimes called the American grip, but is more commonly called the Seemiller grip. (Here's a video of Dan Seemiller, the lefty, in the final of the 1989 LA. Open.) 

The grip is sort of a variation of the shakehands grip, with the top of the racket rotated to the left so that the index finger curls around the side of the racket. The forehand is played about the same, but on the backhand the arm rotates about so that the same side is used on the forehand and backhand. Despite its promising start, the grip never came close to the popularity of shakehands or penhold, and in recent years fewer and fewer players use the grip. However, you will face these players in tournaments (especially in the northeast U.S.) and need to be ready.

Like shakehands and penhold, the Seemiller grip also has its backhand and forehand variations, except here it is more extreme. If the top of the racket is rotated to the left, it is a backhand grip, as used by Eric Boggan and Brian Masters, which weakens the forehand loop. If the racket is rotated to the right (almost becoming a regular shakehands grip), it is a forehand grip, as used by Dan and Rick Seemiller, which weakens the backhand.

The Seemiller grip has four major advantages. It is probably the best grip for blocking, especially on the backhand. There is very little weakness in the middle - in fact, the grip is at its best there. It gives a very natural wrist snap on forehand loops against backspin. And since only one side of the racket is used, and because the racket is easy to flip with this grip, it allows a player to have an off-surface on selected shots, usually antispin, though some use long pips. A player with this grip can flip to use that side as a variation, and then flip back to the regular surface, usually inverted. (All four of the U.S. team members mentioned above used antispin on the reverse side, inverted on the other.)

The disadvantages are that the wrist can make it difficult to play the corners (and so players with this grip often have trouble with players who play to the wide corners); it limits the backhand mostly to close-to-the-table blocking and hitting, with a very limited backhand loop; and it can be difficult to counterloop with this grip.

Because of the lack of a strong backhand loop, deep serves and pushes to the backhand can give this grip problems, unless the player has very fast footwork and can play the forehand from the backhand over and over. (Others, like Eric Boggan, learned to hit backspin serves with his antispin side, and then flipped back to inverted for the next shot.)

Some players with the Seemiller grip can be absolute walls on the backhand, and it makes no sense trying to overpower that side - but if you attack the forehand side first (and perhaps force them a step off the table) and then come back to the backhand, then the backhand wall might crumble. The grip is weaker from off the table, and like most shots, is less consistent when you have to move.

Most players with the Seemiller grip use the off surface to return serves, especially short ones. Some have the ability to quickly judge the depth of the incoming serve, and use anti against short serves, inverted to loop or otherwise attack long serves. If they use the anti to return most serves, serve deep, and you should get a relatively weak return or an erratic anti attack. Often a deep serve to the forehand is especially effective. If they try to flip the racket based on the depth of your serve, mix in short spinny serves and fast, long serves, and watch them struggle to flip their racket appropriately - it’s not easy! It is very important not to telegraph your serves - players like this are very good at picking up small cues, so try to use the exact same motion for both short and long serves, at least until contact.

How do you get maximum power on your shots? Many players at the beginning/intermediate levels might say "swing hard!" But that's the worst thing you can do. Until your muscles are trained properly, swinging hard means spastically using a few muscles but not all of them. It also means putting less weight into the shot. Both cases result in either wimpy shots that any well-trained kid would laugh at, or sometimes powerful shots with no control.

Watch a baseball pitcher with a good fastball. (You can find many at Youtube.com) Many of them can break 100mph, and nearly all are in the 90s. Watch these flamethrowers; are they swinging hard, or are they swinging smart? I think you can see the answer; the most powerful throwers don't seem to put full effort into their pitch; in fact, their throws seem effortless. And they're able to hit a rather small target from over 60 feet away.

Now watch the top table tennis players, and you'll see the same. The shots of the most powerful players often seem effortless. Meanwhile, watch some intermediate players as they swing as hard as they can, usually with less power and always with less consistency. Many spastically use one or two muscles at full power while losing the power of everything else, including their body weight rotating into the shot. Their shots spray all over the court as you cannot control a muscle spastically contracting at full power.

A key here is that these baseball pitchers and table tennis players not only have power, but they have control. How do they do it? The secret is they use their full bodies in a fluid motion that rotates everything smoothly into the shot, leading to power and control. It starts from the legs, then the hips, then the waist, then the shoulders, then the arm, and finally the wrist, which effortlessly snaps into the ball like the tip of a whip. All these muscles are engaged as the player accelerates into the shot, creating the seemingly effortless power of a pitcher or top table tennis player.

It is the addition of all these smooth muscle contractions and rotations, in the proper sequence (from bottom to top, and roughly from big muscles to small) that gives great power and control. So here's a good rule: never swing at 100%. Swing smoothly, using the full body, at perhaps 70-80% full power, and watch the power and control shot way up. 

Backswing, forward swing . . . backswing, forward swing . . . backswing, forward swing . . . when hitting forehand to forehand or backhand to backhand, how many of you get into this pattern, whether hitting or looping? The problem is you are doing something you should never do in a match, so why would you want to practice it? There are three parts to a swing: Backswing, forward swing, and the often forgotten return to ready position. A player would almost never go directly from his follow through to backswinging. 

Beginners and even relatively advanced players often warm up and practice as if there were only two parts to the swing, and it often costs them when it becomes habit. Often in real rallies they are set only for forehand or backhand, not both, because of this lack of return to ready position. If they don't do it in practice, why would they do it in a match? In reality, these players do tend to sort of return to ready after each shot, but either more slowly or not all the way, and so they often aren't ready for the next shot. For example, they'll hit or loop a backhand, and automatically bring their racket back after the follow through as if they were going to play another backhand, when of course they might be playing a forehand. And vice versa for forehands. 

Instead, make a practice of returning to ready after each shot when practicing. On both forehands and backhands, this basically means the racket goes through a triangle, starting from the ready position: Backswing (bring racket back); forward swing (bring racket forward and up), and return to ready position (racket drops down and back to where it started, ready for the next shot). Usually these are essentially continuous, so there might not be any stop at the ready position; you go straight through the triangle, with the move to the ready position essentially the first half of the backswing, though it could continue into a backswing for either forehand or backhand. So drop the linear strokes and learn the triangle!

These days it seems like everyone's trying to be like everyone else. That's a pretty successful way of getting good, if you copy the top players. But many are missing the benefits of doing something different. Give your opponent a different look, at least on some shots, and guess what? He might begin to struggle. This doesn't mean changing your whole game to some unorthodox mess; it means developing certain "pet shots" that are different than the norm. They give you more variation on certain shots than if you only have "orthodox" shots.

For example, a few years ago penholder Wang Hao and shakehanders Ma Long and Zhang Jike, all from China, showed up on the world scene flipping short serves to their forehands with their backhands (with banana flips, i.e. mini backhand loops over the table with topspin and sidespin), and all three reached #1 in the world. Few had done this before, and now seemingly everyone at the higher levels is doing it. Or check out videos of Dimitrij Ovtcharov of Germany, world #6 and the #1 European, and his unorthodox backhand serve from the middle of the table. Or former world #1 Timo Boll, also of Germany, who often switches to a forehand grip for looping with extreme inside-out sidespin loops.  

Some, of course, naturally do something different, by having a non-inverted surface, a different grip (Seemiller grip, or even penhold grip for some, since many aren't used to playing that), an unorthodox stroke (not usually good unless it's just as a variation), or even something as simple as being left-handed. But for most players, you'll want to do something "different" while sticking to your normal shakehands inverted on both sides game. And there are lots of ways. Below are ten examples - and I do all of these on occasion, though less now than when I was an active tournament player and honed these variations by actually using them regularly. Pick out one or two, and give them a try!

1. Serve from forehand side. Nearly everyone serves from the backhand corner these days, with a few tomahawk serves from the forehand. Throw in a few forehand pendulum or backhand serves from the forehand side. The surprise factor will often make up for your starting a bit out of position.
2. Serve short sidespin to the forehand. So many players serve over and Over and OVER to the middle and backhand it's almost silly, and when they do serve short to the forehand, it's a simple backspin ball. Instead, learn to serve short to the forehand with sidespin that pulls the ball toward your forehand, making it awkward for the opponent to return the ball down the line. You can do this with a backhand serve, a reverse pendulum serve, or a forehand tomahawk serve. Or do it with a regular forehand pendulum serve.
3. Slow, spinny loop. Most people these days loop either hard or harder. Try letting the ball drop a bit more, and go for a super-spinny slow one. If it goes deep, it'll drive blockers crazy. If it lands short, it'll drive counter-loopers crazy.
4. Dead loop. Fake spin, and instead give a dead loop. You sell this by using an exaggerated follow-through right after contact (including a big wrist snap), making it seem spinny.
5. Dead push. Push without spin, but with an exaggerated follow through to fake spin.
6. Sidespin push. Come across the ball as you push. This is especially easy on the backhand, with a right-to-left motion (for righties), with the ball breaking to the right. It's especially effective wide to the right, breaking into a righty's opponent's backhand.
7. Ginzo push. Most players push to keep the ball in play. Throw in a few super-ginzo (i.e. extremely heavy) pushes, and watch opponents struggle. It's easier if you take the ball a little later for this, but advanced players can do this quick off the bounce.
8. Dead block. Block it dead, chop block, sidespin block - these will frustrate many opponents and set you up for a conventional attack. They are especially effective and easy on the backhand side.
9. Countering change-of-pace. Rather than bang every ball in a fast counter-hitting rally, sometimes hit one soft. Either keep it low and short to the net, or deep on the table.
10. Flatter flip. Most players flip short balls with topspin. (It's called a flick in Europe.) Sometimes try a flatter one. Hit it a bit softer since you don't have topspin to pull it down, but not too soft. (Recently I've seen a number of top players experimenting with this variation.)

What can a player do if he is having trouble reading the spin on the opponent's serve? At the lower levels, this usually means the opponent's serving motion is too quick for the player to pick up contact. At the higher levels, it's often because the opponent is hiding his serve, a serious problem since many umpires do not enforce the serving rules and allow players to illegally hide contact, making it difficult to read the spin on the ball. However, the techniques for returning these hidden serves are essentially the same for those at lower levels who struggle to read the spin off any serve. So what can you do when you have trouble reading the spin, whether against a good server or against an illegally hidden one?

Before hidden serves became illegal, players at higher levels learned to read the spin from watching the ball itself, and how it moved through the air and bounced on the table. But since it became illegal to hide contact, this became almost a lost art. And yet it's something players need to learn or they'll have great difficulty in many matches. Here are ten tips on how to do so.

1. Don't do too much. Accept that if you can't read the spin off the serve quickly as the ball leaves the opponent's racket, you are not going to consistently make strong returns. Instead, your goal is to make consistent controlled and well-placed returns. (Actually, that should be the primary goal even if you read the spin.)
2. Take the ball as late as you can. This gives you more time to react to the spin. Most often players do read the spin of a serve, even if it's hidden, they just don't read it quickly enough to react. The more time you have to read it, the better.
3. Assume the serve is topspin or sidespin until you see otherwise. Even if you don't read them immediately, backspin serves are much easier to adjust to at the last second than topspin and sidespin serves. Backspin serves are almost always slower and they slow down even more as they hit the table, and you can just push or softly loop or roll them back. Topspin and sidespin serves jump as they hit the table making it difficult to react at the last second, and if you push them, they shoot off the end or side of the table. So you should generally assume the serve has topspin or sidespin and aim low with a controlled forehand or backhand drive, or possibly by chopping. If it's backspin, you can make a last-second adjustment much more easily than against topspin or sidespin.
4. Return the ball softly but with placement and depth. Generally keep it wide and deep to the server's weaker side, usually the backhand. Make him move way over to this backhand side if he wants to use his forehand, and then you can block back to his open forehand side. Or go to the wide forehand to draw the opponent there, then block back to his open backhand side. Depth is extremely important; a soft return that goes deep can be effective. A soft return that lands in the middle of the table (depth-wise) will usually get hammered.
5. Read the spin by the way it moves through the air. A topspin ball drops quickly, a backspin serve floats, and a sidespin serve curves sideways. The differences are subtle but you should be able to pick up the differences.
6. Read the spin by the way it bounces on the table. A topspin ball jumps at you, a sidespin ball curves sideways, and a backspin ball slows down.
7. Read the spin from the label. This is tricky, and it's doubtful one can really read the spin this way if the ball is spinning rapidly. But some claim they can do so, even at higher levels. At lower levels, where there's less spin, you can pick it up. Also, this allows you to read no-spin serves, where you should be able to see the label.
8. Read the spin based on past serves. If you keep pushing serves that look like backspin but are actually topspin or sidespin and so they keep going off the end or side of the table, perhaps the next time you see that serve that looks like backspin you should accept that it's topspin or sidespin.
9. Treat topspin and sidespin almost the same. If you use a regular drive stroke, the spin won't take on your racket that much. As long as you give yourself some margin for error by not being too aggressive, you can treat them almost the same. Your return off a topspin serve might go a little deeper, and off a sidespin serve a little more sideways, but not as much as you'd think. When your returns go shooting off the end or side it's usually because you are pushing topspin or sidespin serves.
10. React to no-spin serves. A no-spin serve that looks spinny is usually more effective than a spinny serves that looks spinny. You can read them using the methods above, except that with no spin, there's no curving in the air or change in the bounce on the table, and you can see the label. Against a no-spin serve, you can use almost any stroke, but adjust to the lack of spin. Often players push these serves high since they are used to pushing against backspin, or they drive them into the net since they are used to driving against topspin.